Norden Farm Productions in association with Kate Tull present ...

Wish I Was Here
Written and performed by Jackie Kay

A live reading of two tragically funny short stories, How to Get Away With Suicide and You Go When You Can No Longer Stay set to a specially commissioned soundscape designed by composer Jon Nicholls.

Malcolm's marriage disintegrates; he leaves his wife and children and moves into a flat nearby, yet feels so far away. Malcolm rants through the night, searching for the perfect way to kill himself and make it look like an accident.

Hilary and Ruth have been together for years. Then Hilary runs up a vast Visa bill, takes to drinking rich red wines, reads slim volumes of poetry and becomes thin. Martin Amis has crept into their relationship and Hilary is leaving.

"Jackie Kay is a virtuoso of voices that go straight to your guts. The book plumbs all kinds of misery, loneliness and pain, but it arcs, warm, gently surreal, wittily compassionate and beautifully written, towards happiness.' Independent on Sunday

"Kay's is a distinctive voice, lucid, occasionally ruthless, sometimes poetic, never self-consciously arty; if stories like these can still be written, the much maligned short-story form must still be alive, not to say kicking." Irish Times.